Virtual Companion: Mounds Park

Virtual Companion : Mounds State Park is an application which employs IDIA Lab's LocusEngine. Visitors to the park use the app to aid in learning and discovery while exploring the park's Adena-Hopewell mounds. Using GPS data, the user's position is geolocated in reference to the historical sites, allowing the app to display relevant content as a dynamic guide. This approach can be expanded for use in cultural heritage, archeology, the sciences and the arts. Interactive features, as well as the user's current location in the park, are marked on a series of map options designed to provide multiple layers of locative information throughout the park. A GPS-driven trail map is available, allowing the user to track their movement through the trails and important features. When an interactive feature is selected on the map, an augmented reality view using gyroscope and compass data is loaded, portraying native people's and habitats from the Adena-Hopewell era. Archaeologists have proposed that the enclosures were used to track celestial alignments. Using solar data from NASA's JPL Horizons database, the movements of the sun on the equinoxes and solstices during the Adena-Hopewell era can be viewed and tracked to search for important alignments.